Cathie Lesjak, interim chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co., poses for a portrait on Sept 15, 2006. HP’s Mark Hurd resigned as chief executive officer after an investigation found he had a personal relationship with a contractor who received numerous inappropriate payments from the company. Chief Financial Officer Lesjak, 51, will take over as interim CEO. Source: Bite Communications via Bloomberg
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Hewlett-Packard Co. officials may have hoped that news of Mark Hurd's stunning resignation as chief executive would quickly fade from the headlines.

But the more stunning revelation that former R-rated film actress and reality TV show contestant Jodie Fisher stood at the center of Hurd's ouster elevated the story out of the private halls of corporate America and into the harsh floodlights of Hollywood pop culture.

And that has left one of Silicon Valley's most iconic firms with a public relations headache.

"This is one of those weird business stories where everyone's scratching their head thinking, 'What's really going on here and what really happened?' " said Sam Singer, a San Francisco public relations executive who has built a reputation as a master of corporate damage control, although not for HP. "It does raise questions of did HP overreact or maybe underreact."

Hurd, 53, announced his resignation Friday after the stock market closed. The Palo Alto company said an internal investigation found that a contractor's claim of sexual harassment was unfounded, but that Hurd violated HP's standards of business conduct with illegitimate payments to the then-unidentified contractor.

Interim chief executive Cathie Lesjak talked to reporters Sunday morning seeking to assure the public that the brand remained strong and that the only change was Hurd's removal.

But later Sunday, the story took a sensational turn when Fisher, 50, who is also a former commercial real estate executive, identified herself as the independent marketing contractor who filed the sexual harassment claim. Fisher, a single mother, and Hurd, who is married, both denied they had an affair, but they have settled the claim privately.

Fisher's name quickly became one of the top search terms on Google, while media sites and the blogosphere dug up Web links to her steamy 1990s feature films like "Intimate Obsessions" and "Sheer Passion," along with more recent photos when she was a "cougar" contestant in NBC-TV's reality dating show "Age of Love."

A New York tabloid called Fisher a "blond stunner," while the tech gossip blog Valleywag posted the "skin flick" trailer from Fisher's 1996 erotic thriller "Body of Influence 2."

"It's a story perfectly made for Valleywag - they're going to be digging into it in particular because that's their niche," Singer said. "This story may have a lot of legs because of the Hollywood element."

Ellison, a friend of the ousted HP executive, added: "In losing Mark Hurd, the HP board failed to act in the best interest of HP's employees, shareholders, customers and partners. ... The HP board admits that it fully investigated the sexual harassment claims against Mark and found them to be utterly false."

Although Singer said it's still far too early to tell whether the controversy will hurt HP's business in the long run, he said the company could have avoided the story taking on a life of its own by not releasing the initial news on a Friday afternoon, a typical tactic of a company hoping for bad news to disappear under cover of the weekend.

"The most important thing that any company can do is to get as much of it out as possible at one time," Singer said. "The worst thing they can do is let things dribble out. It's like water torture. Put it all on the table and try to get it over with within a news cycle or two."

Sally Baack, a professor of business management at San Francisco State University, agreed, saying HP officials should have known which details could later surface.

"HP is one of the most powerful companies in the world; they should have controlled that information," Baack said. "It makes them look less than forthcoming."

Still, Baack said, HP's leadership did make the right decision to force Hurd out, especially since his own written standards of business conduct said he wanted HP "to be a company known for its ethical leadership."

"At HP, with the tradition of the HP Way serving as the foundation for how HP conducts itself, executives are held to an even higher standard," Baack said.

"In the long term, people will forget about it," Pfeffer said. "The irony is that his very success made it possible to fire him because the company has done so well under his tenure. He built a very strong foundation."

One other figure caught in the headlines is Carly Fiorina, the chief executive Hurd replaced at HP. Political pundits wonder if Fiorina's campaign as the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat from California could be harmed by new stories that refer to Hurd as the savior of HP after Fiorina left.

But Baack said Fiorina can now point to Hurd and say, 'Well, take a look now, he's not so perfect either.' "